/*
    Copyright 2009 Spencer B. Koehler, Ph.D.

    This file is part of the Brillig Toolkit.

    The Brillig Toolkit is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    The Brillig Toolkit is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
    along with The Brillig Toolkit.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
*/
package org.brillig.nlp;


/**
 * Interface for creating token pointers for string wrapper based lexical
 * tokenizers.
 * <p>
 * The main differentiator between token pointer implementations is typically
 * the revise method which implements a strategy for revising undefined tokens.
 *
 * @author Spence Koehler
 */
public interface TokenPointerFactory {
  
  /**
   * Get the first token pointer instance, which contains its own knowledge
   * about revising and incrementing through all tokens.
   */
  public TokenPointer getFirstPointer(StringWrapper stringWrapper, int skipUpTo);

}
